Dealing with offending behaviour: Custodial Sentencing Flashcards
What is custodial sentencing?
A decision made by a court that punishment for a crime should involve time being in ‘custody’ - prison or in some other closed therapeutic or educational institution.
What are the 4 aims of custodial sentencing?
-Deterrence
-Incapacitation
-Retribution
-Rehabilitation
What is deterrence?
The unpleasant prison experience is designed to put off the individual from engaging in offending behaviour.
-> based on the behaviourist idea of conditioning through vicarious punishment.
What is incapacitation?
The offender is taken out of society to prevent them reoffending as a means of protecting the public.
What is retribution?
Society is enacting revenge for the offence by making the offender suffer, and the level of suffering should be proportionate to the seriousness of the offence.
What is rehabilitation?
The objective of prison is to reform and not punish offenders.
-> gives the offender the chance to reflect on their offence.
What are the 3 psychological effects of custodial sentencing?
-Stress and depression
-Institutionalisation
-Prisonisation
How is stress and depression a psychological effect of custodial sentencing?
Suicide rates are considerably higher in prison that in the general population, as are incidents of self-mutilation and self- harm.
Why is institutionalisation a psychological effect of custodial sentencing?
Having adapted to the norms and routines of prison life, inmates may become so accustomed to these that they are no longer able to function on the outside.
Why is prisonisation a psychological effect of custodial sentencing?
Prisoners are socialised into adopting an ‘inmate code’.
-> behaviour that may be considered unacceptable in the outside world may be encouraged and rewarded inside the walls of the institution.
What is recidivism?
Reoffending, A tendency to relapse into a previous condition or mode of behaviour.
what was the recidivism rate in the UK in 2019?
45%
